Today in History: William Shakespeare Marries Anne Hathaway

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
— William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

On November 28, 1585 William Shakespeare, at the age of 18 years, married Anne Hathaway, who was 26, as proven by a bond costing 40 pounds for their marriage license in Stratford-upon-Avon. Anne gave birth to their daughter, Susanna, just six months later and, in another two years, to twins Hamlet, who died at the age of 11, and Judith. Little, however, is known about Will and Anne’s relationship. While Shakespeare wrote extensively and performed in London, Anne remained in their house in Henley Street, and then in New Place (also in Stratford) — outliving her husband who left her his “second-best bed with the furniture”. Anne Hathaway is just one of the mysteries surrounding The Bard, for whom there is some documentation (court and church records, marriage certificate), but very little personal history.

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